Having an extra house, condo or apartment is potentially quite lucrative, especially if what the tenant pays covers your mortgage, taxes, insurance, etc. Someone else is basically building your pool of wealth because in 10 or 20 years, you’ll have this $100,000+ asset that is paid off. You can sell it for a large chunk of cash, or keep renting it out and have a nice, steady stream of income. The major problem is that managing this isn’t exactly passive, unless you hire a rental management company who generally take one month’s rent out of the year in exchange for doing this.

There is a specific tax definition of passive income, known as “passive activity” to the Internal Revenue Service. Passive income is any income you make without actively working or are materially involved. The IRS defines it as any rental activity or any business in which the taxpayer does not “materially participate.” Nonpassive activities, or active activities, are businesses in which the taxpayer works on a regular, continuous, and substantial basis.

Passive income is income you can earn without actually exerting yourself in a job. The idea of passive income rose in the early 1900s with the rise of income investing. Back then, Americans didn’t have the social protections they enjoy now (social security and Medicare for example). You may take your retirement plan for granted, but before these policies were enacted, the majority of the elderly working class lived in poverty.
The most liquid of the private investments are investing in equity or credit hedge funds, real estate funds, and private company funds. There will usually be 6 month – 3 year lockup periods. The least liquid of the private investments are when you invest directly into private companies yourself. You might not be able to get your money out for 5-10 years, depending on the success of the company and upcoming liquidity events.
According to Uncle Sam, you need to be "materially involved" in an enterprise to earn active income. With passive income, it's just the opposite, as the IRS deems you to be earning passive income if you're not materially involved with a profit-making enterprise. By and large, expect income to be taxable if you are engaged in a passive income enterprise. You will need to report earnings to the IRS.

To quote Pat Flynn, a very successful passive income expert (he’s made millions), “We don’t have to trade our time for money one to one. Instead, we invest our time upfront, creating valuable products and experiences for people, and we reap the benefits of that time invested later,” he says, adding, “It’s not easy. I just want to make sure that’s clear.”

For 2017, passive income that is taxed as ordinary income will be taxed in the 2017 tax brackets, and so the income tax rates range from 10 to 39.6 percent depending on your annual income. Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are taxed at zero, 15 and 20 percent for 2017, but the brackets are different. So you can earn up to $37,950 in the 2017 tax year without paying taxes on these gains; if you earn between $37,950 and $418,400, the gains are taxed at 15 percent; and if you earn more than $418,400, your gains are taxed at 20 percent.
Lastly, you’ll need someone to help you create your product. Unless you decide to do this yourself, you’ll need to choose wisely. There are a lot of different choices for finding a graphic designer. Fiverr.com is a cheap option for having someone create a basic icon or other graphic needs starting at $5. 99designs.com is another great option if you want to have multiple graphic designers compete against one another to pitch you their best versions of your idea. 99designs also offers a 100% money back guarantee (which I’ve used), so you have nothing to lose! Upwork.com is good for finding just about everything. You can find graphic designers, app developers, and even marketers. I would stick to a simple graphic designer and app developer. Some teams do both graphic designs and app development, but I personally like to keep those separate. From experience, I’ve gotten better content when I don’t use one-stop-shops.
You must file a written statement with your original income tax return for the first tax year in which two or more activities are originally grouped into a single activity. The statement must provide the names, addresses, and employer identification numbers (EINs), if applicable, for the activities being grouped as a single activity. In addition, the statement must contain a declaration that the grouped activities make up an appropriate economic unit for the measurement of gain or loss under the passive activity rules.
Unfortunately, I can’t answer that conclusively one way or the other. It all depends on you, what you like to do, your work ethic, personality, etc. If you are a good writer perhaps you could write a book and make money that way. Or, you could start your own website and do affiliate marketing. Just because you are young it doesn’t mean you can’t make money doing at least a few of these ideas. I wish you luck in your money making efforts!
I use a property manager to handle my rental properties. Most months, my only involvement is checking my bank account to verify I received my checks, then making a payment to the mortgage company. If you don’t have enough money to buy a rental property, you can get started investing in real estate by buying a REIT stock or investing through platforms that let you buy a partial interest in a building.
Next, make sure to know the difference between “Top Grossing” and “Top Paid”. They are both very different rankings. “Top Grossing” is what you use to study what is making the most money. “Top Paid” is more so for trending. More downloads doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue. Personally, I study both. However, “Top Grossing” is better at giving you an idea of revenue potential.
I hope you remember me for my good qualities and not my bad ones because I have plenty of both. As far as the tax bill, I’ll have a podcast coming up on it but probably won’t do a post until it’s law and probably not until well into the new year. I’m sure I’ll offend all of my listeners with the podcast and the post, both those who think the tax system should be more progressive and those who think it should be less progressive.
Generally, rental activities are passive activities even if you materially participated in them. However, if you qualified as a real estate professional, rental real estate activities in which you materially participated aren’t passive activities. For this purpose, each interest you have in a rental real estate activity is a separate activity, unless you choose to treat all interests in rental real estate activities as one activity. See the Instructions for Schedule E (Form 1040), Supplemental Income and Loss, for information about making this choice.
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No offense to the commenter, but you sound like a Complete_Newbie. You are correct that it takes hard work and patience to successfully invest and generate passive income, so do you really expect financial blog posts to provide you with specific deals or no-fail investment opportunities that you can jump on today? And if they do, they are likely just bait-and-switch sales schemes to induce you to pay for coaching or mentoring. You have to do your own leg-work and fact-finding and accept the level of risk that comes with the territory. Solid, free financial advice (like this blog) is pretty awesome and maybe you should take a look at your attitude when you wonder what is standing in the way of your passive income goals.
When you invest in a dividend-paying stock, you are buying a share of the company and you literally become part-owner of that business. As the company grows and generates extra cash that it doesn’t necessarily want to re-invest, it might decide to return some of the extra cash to the shareholders in the form of dividends. And because you own a fraction of the company, you will receive a portion of the cash!
Special rules regarding passive activity losses were enacted in 1986 to limit the amount you could reduce your tax liability from passive income. However, you can still reduce your non-passive income up to $25,000 if your income is below $150,000 and you actively participate in passive rental real estate activities. This amount is phased out between $100,000 and $150,000. Other than this exception, you may only claim losses up the amount of income from the activity. Losses that can not be claimed are carried forward until the property is disposed of or there is adequate income to offset the loss. Real property and other types of investments, if they qualify, may also be used in a 1031 exchange to avoid paying taxes on the income from the sell of the property. This only applies if the proceeds from the sell are used to purchase a similar investment.
Nonpassive: Businesses in which the taxpayer materially participates. Also, salaries, guaranteed payments, 1099 commission income and portfolio or investment income are deemed to be nonpassive. Portfolio income includes interest income, dividends, royalties, gains and losses on stocks, pensions, lottery winnings, and any other property held for investment
Social Security retirement benefits may or may not be taxable depending on your annual income. If your annual income is more than $34,000 as a single taxpayer or $44,000 as a joint filer, up to 85 percent of your Social Security may be included in your ordinary income and taxed at your normal income tax rate. If your income is under $25,000 as a single taxpayer or $32,000 as a joint filer, you don't pay tax on Social Security benefits. If your income is between $25,000 and $34,000 as a single filer or $32,000 and $44,000 as a joint filer, up to 50 percent of your benefits are taxable.
I prefer assets that make me a high return for the lowest amount of work possible (semi-passive involvement). And assets that pay me in several unique ways. Cash flow is only one way RE makes money for me. I also get principal reductions, appreciation, tax advantages (depreciation), and I control the rental increases on a yearly basis. Plus a majority of the capital is provided by the secondary market on 30 year fixed low interest rate debt.
It is very important to understand that contacting a “professional” to learn how to do this only results in them trying to sell me crap properties (whether high end or low end). I’ve tried contacting realtors out of state, and they attempt to sell me crap or someone else’s problem. No one has a vested interest in actually helping someone or teaching them about how to get an out of state rental. very frustrating. I could go out tomorrow and buy a rental in my city, but that is the last place I want to own one. Anyone? Are there an real people on here?

That is a nice list of passive income sources. Actually, the most up-to-date list of dividend growth stocks is the list of dividend champions, maintained by Dave Fish. The list of dividend aristocrats is incomplete at best. For example, the dividend champions list has over 100 companies that have managed to increase dividends each year for at least 25 years in a row. The list of dividend aristocrats has no more than 50 – 60.

Passive income broadly refers to money you don't earn from actively engaging in a trade or business. By its broadest definition, passive income would include nearly all investment income, including interest, dividends, and capital gains. What most people are referring to when they talk about passive income is income that comes from what the IRS calls a passive activity.
If the total is more than 500, don’t complete Worksheet A or B. None of the activities are passive activities because you satisfy test 4 for material participation. (See Material participation tests , earlier.) Report all the income and losses from these activities on the forms and schedules you normally use. Don’t include the income and losses on Form 8582.

After these tenants move out, I'm thinking of just keeping the rental empty with furniture. It sounds stupid to give up $4,200 a month, but I really hate dealing with the homeowner association, move-in/move-out rules, and maintenance issues. Given that the condo doesn't have a mortgage and I have to pay taxes on some of the rental income, I'm not giving up that much. The condo can be a place for my sister, parents, or in-laws to crash when they want to stay in SF for longer than a week or two.

Hi there. I am new here, I live in Norway, and I am working my way to FI. I am 43 years now and started way to late….. It just came to my mind for real 2,5years ago after having read Mr Moneymoustache`s blog. Fortunately I have been good with money before also so my starting point has been good. I was smart enough to buy a rental apartment 18years ago, with only 12000$ in my pocket to invest which was 1/10 of the price of the property. I actually just sold it as the ROI (I think its the right word for it) was coming down to nothing really. If I took the rent, subtracted the monthly costs and also subtracted what a loan would cost me, and after that subtracted tax the following numbers appeared: The sales value of the apartment after tax was around 300000$ and the sum I would have left every year on the rent was 3750$……..Ok it was payed down so the real numbers were higher, but that is incredibly low returns. It was located in Oslo the capital of Norway, so the price rise have been tremendous the late 18 years. I am all for stocks now. I know they also are priced high at the moment which my 53% return since December 2016 also shows……..The only reason this apartment was the right decision 18 years ago, was the big leverage and the tremendous price growth. It was right then, but it does not have to be right now to do the same. For the stocks I run a very easy in / out of the marked rule, which would give you better sleep, and also historically better rates of return, but more important lower volatility on you portfolio. Try out for yourself the following: Sell the S&P 500 when it is performing under its 365days average, and buy when it crosses over. I do not use the s&P 500 but the obx index in Norway. Even if you calculate in the cost of selling and buying including the spread of the product I am using the results are amazing. I have run through all the data thoroughly since 1983, and the result was that the index gave 44x the investment and the investment in the index gives 77x the investment in this timeframe. The most important findings though is what it means to you when you start withdrawing principal, as you will not experience all the big dips and therefore do not destroy your principal withdrawing through those dips. I hav all the graphs and statistics for it and it really works. The “drawbacks” is that during good times like from 2009 til today you will fall a little short of the index because of some “false” out indications, but who cares when your portfolio return in 2008 was 0% instead of -55%…….To give a little during good times costs so little in comparison to the return you get in the bad times. All is of course done from an account where you do not get taxed for selling and buying as long as you dont withdraw anything.
If any amount of your pro rata share of an S corporation's loss for the tax year is disallowed under the basis limitation, a ratable portion of your pro rata share of each item of deduction or loss of the S corporation is disallowed for the tax year. For this purpose, the ratable portion of an item of deduction or loss is the amount of such item multiplied by the fraction obtained by dividing:
As interest rates have been going down over the past 30 years, bond prices have continued to go up. With the 10-year yield (risk free rate) at roughly 2.55%, and the Fed Funds rate at 1.5% (two more 0.25% hikes are expected in 2018), it’s hard to see interest rates declining much further. That said, long term interest rates can stay low for a long time. Just look at Japanese interest rates, which are negative (inflation is higher than nominal interest rate).

Active investors are those who operate their investment properties as a business. The majority of their annual earnings come from their rental properties and they spend 750 or more hours throughout the tax year operating the property as a business. Active investors are also termed “real estate professionals” by the IRS, since their rental property businesses are considered their primary occupation.

More good news. The LLC’s activities are considered self-rental activities which means that you are creating a transaction with yourself. Provided that this arrangement is at market rates, the IRS accepts this relationship. Moreover, the self-rental income is not considered passive and therefore not subjected to the Net Investment Income Tax calculations.

In January 2018, I missed my chance of raising the rent on my new incoming tenants because it didn't come to mind until very late in the interview process. I didn't write about my previous tenant's sudden decision to move out in December 2017 after 1.5 years, because they provided a relatively seamless transition by introducing their longtime friends to replace them. I didn't miss a month of rent and didn't have to do any marketing, so I felt I'd just keep the rent the same.

Pursuing passive income can be the right move for you, especially if you just need some extra cash to pay off debts. It’s important, though, that you find the right side hustle for you and your lifestyle. There’s no point in creating passive income if it’s not passive at all. Decide how much time and money you have to spare. Then choose the passive income venture that will prove most worthwhile.
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